Educational Science

Most Americans think intelligent aliens exist, and half think they have visited Earth

For the last few weeks, the imminent release of a U.S. intelligence report on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had stirred excitement across the United States. So it's not surprising to find that most Americans believe in intelligent life inhabiting other worlds, according to a survey conducted before the report was...

How would we give aliens directions to Earth?

The universe is inconceivably large and mind-bogglingly old. Given all that time and space, it seems probable that somewhere, sometime, another spark of intelligence flared into existence. But if there are intelligent beings somewhere out there, how on Earth could we connect with them and, assuming we'd like to be...

A doughnut UFO in the skies over Switzerland. Strange green lights vanishing into the clouds above Canada. A saucer-shaped blob plunging suddenly into the ocean. The year 2021 gave truth-seekers and alien hunters no shortage of mysteries to ponder. But it also gave them answers — from a hotly anticipated...

Long-anticipated 'UFO report' finally released. No, it's not aliens.

The Pentagon has released a highly anticipated UFO report that in no way suggests aliens are responsible for more than 140 sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) by navy pilots. Even so, the report indicates that most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects. And out of the...

Sorry folks: 'Alien' signal from Proxima Centauri was likely just a broken computer on Earth

A strange radio signal once thought to be a possible sign of alien intelligence in a nearby star system was likely created by a broken piece of human technology, according to new research. On April 29, 2019, astronomers detected a signal beaming toward Earth, it seemed, from Proxima Centauri —...

Harvard-led team to search cosmos for extraterrestrial space tech and UFOs

Are there intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations capable of building technologies that can travel between the stars? An international research project is poised to find out. The Galileo Project, helmed by a multi-institutional team of scientists led by Avi Loeb, a professor of science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University,...

Why extraterrestrial intelligence is more likely to be artificial than biological

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? It’s a question that has been debated for centuries, if not millennia. But it is only recently that we’ve had an actual chance of finding out, with initiatives such as (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) using radio telescopes to actively listen for radio...

Alien life could thrive on big 'Hycean' exoplanets

The search for alien life should broaden its horizons a bit, a new study suggests. Alien hunters have to date focused largely on Earthlike planets — a reasonable place to start, given that our rocky, water-covered world is the only one we know of that hosts life. But the universe...

This doomed alien planet has a year that lasts just 16 hours — and it's getting faster

Astronomers have broken yet another record, spotting a new gas giant with the shortest known orbit. The world takes just 16 hours to circle its star — but someday, the dance may come to an abrupt end. The newly announced exoplanet belongs to a category scientists refer to as hot...

'Doughnut UFO' over Switzerland defies explanation

On the night of Monday, Nov. 8, a photographer in Zurich, Switzerland, who goes by the Twitter handle @Eavix1Eavix aimed his camera at the sky and snapped several pictures of what he aptly described as a doughnut UFO. Composed of several bright-blue concentric rings, the flying object looked as much...